Yesterday, while chatting via Skype to Ivana Tinkle, the internet connection on my phone line went dead. Within a minute or two, my ISP had an 'incident' report on their status page, and via a separate 3G connection (that they also provide) I was able to see what was unfolding.
Their status page on this incident (also mirrored on a dedicated newgroup):
http://status.aa.net.uk/apost.cgi?incident=1819
and the graph of what happened - yes, they ping all customer's connections every second, and know *immediately* when something's gone wrong.
Thumbs up to Andrews and Arnold for fully informing customers.
